Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

He stared at me. “If that’s humor, Sewell, I find it a little strange. If it isn’t humor, you should know that I’m physically capable of throwing you into your automobile.”

“I guess you are, at that.”

“Please go, will you?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“There’s nothing I can conceive of that we can talk about.”

“I just wondered if another man could take over that business opportunity Dodd mentioned to you, Mr. Pryor.”

He stood there, the sun on his face, looking at me, fists on his hips, brown arms flexed. I cannot say there was any physical change. I saw no change. But I sensed a change that went on inside. I sensed a shifting, a re-evaluation, a new poise of forces. A man might sit at a poker table with that same immobility, certain from the restrained betting that his was the winning hand, and then see a large bet made.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Dodd was going to speak to you. He told me he was. I understand you were going to finance him.”

“I’m not interested in new business ventures.”

“He said you were interested in his.”

“Then he lied to you, because I never heard any proposition from him. I thought he was satisfied with his job.”

“Maybe I should rephrase it. He said you couldn’t help but be interested in his proposition.”

“That’s a strange statement.”

“Isn’t it.”

“Are you trying to be cryptic? You’re talking way over my head, young man.”

“I don’t imagine it was the money that stopped you. I guess it was just having someone know. Or maybe you have that strange form of distorted honesty that saw it as one way to get me out of a jail where I didn’t belong. There was a good chance I might get electrocuted for killing her. You wouldn’t have liked that. Conscience is a funny thing, Mr. Pryor. Even your twisted one.”

“This is the damnedest nonsense I ever heard.”

I measured the distance between us and then said softly, “How did she look through the binoculars, Willy? Lush and desirable? You know when I mean. When you broke Dusty’s arm.”

“You must be quite mad.” He said it with discouraging calm.

“It’s the hot sun, Willy. I wonder how you fit your conscience around another thing, though — that elastic conscience of yours. How...”

“Why don’t you leave before I throw you off my land?”

“How do you adjust to what happened to your sister? You did that, you know. You killed the father and then watched the father’s blood come out in the daughter. You framed the beloved sister Nadine.”

Again it was the poker table. He had matched the large bet. Now the stranger’s cards were turned over. He looked beyond me. His mouth moved and was still. His eyes saw nothing.

“There’ll be more,” I said. “Somebody else will figure it out next. Maybe one of your own girls. Maybe your wife. Or maybe she half suspects already. There aren’t any secrets, Mr. Pryor. Not about a thing like this.”

There was something reminiscent of a bull in the set of his shoulders, in the hump of muscle at the nape of his neck. He came at me with the wild sudden fury of a bull. I had driven him a little bit too far. There was no room in his brain for cold plans and projects. There was room for nothing but fury, a very desperate fury.

I had destroyed his world and I must in turn be destroyed. A fist like a sledge numbed my left arm. I struck back once and a second blow thumped my ribs and he was on me. His arms locked around me, head driving against my chin, knuckles in the small of my back. I tripped and fell heavily and he was on top of me, smashing the wind out of me as he fell. I was young and reasonably husky, but you can’t fight that sort of fury. You can’t even survive that kind of fury. He got a blocky knee on my stomach and husky brown hands locked around my throat. I tensed my throat muscles and tried to get hold of a finger to pry it back and loosen his grip. My hands were sweaty and I could not get a grip. The last bit of air rasped in my throat and then his hands closed the air passage. My chest convulsed. The sun swam and darkened and I slapped weakly at his face with hands made of balsa and paper, like the frail drifting wings of toy gliders.

He was taken off me. I sat up, retching and coughing, and color came back into the world. I saw Pryor stagger and then make what must have been a second or third charge at Paul France, trying to get his hands on him. He hit Pryor three times as Pryor came at him, moved almost casually to the side and hit him twice more as Pryor went by. The last blow was decisive. Pryor’s legs worked for three more strides before he went down on his face. The four Pryor females came running down from the cottage, one of them emitting short sharp screams with each stride. John Fidd appeared with a shotgun.

I got to my feet. A lot of little white dots whirred around like so many bees and slowly faded away. France said, “Your girl said to find you and keep an eye on you, bub.”

“Thanks.”

He touched a red mark on his chin and said, speculatively, “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all.”

“Get back,” Fidd snarled. “Get back against that car, both of you.”

France walked directly toward him, took the shotgun, wrenched it away from him, murmuring softly, “Easy, Dad. Easy now.”

The girls had rolled their father over onto his back. Mrs. Pryor was demanding to know what had happened.

I said to France, “I’ve heard a citizen can arrest another citizen. Is that the truth?”

“It’s legal. What have you got on him?”

“He murdered Rolph Olan, Mary Olan and Dodd Raymond.”

Skeeter flew at me like a fat brown robin — a robin with claws. “That’s a damn lie!” she screamed. “You’re a big liar!”

Willy Pryor hadn’t opened his eyes or moved. He opened his mouth and said, “It isn’t a lie. It’s the truth.” He got up slowly and steadily, brushed his women aside and walked toward us. “Which car do you want me in?”

France opened the door of his grey sedan. “Right in here, please.”

I followed the grey car. The Pryor car, with the four females and John Fidd, followed me. It was a bright Sunday and seventeen miles to Warren, with the first part of it through lovely farmland. We went by with our load of heartbreak. The cows didn’t care. The bees didn’t care. The birds didn’t give a damn. It was May with summer coming up.

Kruslov let me sit in on it. He acted like a man who had been hit sharply over the head. He kept staring at Pryor and shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. It was Sunday and it took a little time to gather the official cast.

Willis Pryor sat stolidly, dominating the small room with a sort of sad force and dignity, waiting, motionless, grave. He seemed like the chairman of the board awaiting tardy members with iron patience.

The pasty-faced stenographer uncapped a huge prehistoric fountain pen of a peculiarly poisonous shade of orange. I sat where I could see dark bruises on the left side of Willis Pryor’s jaw.

“I guess we’re ready, Mr. Pryor,” Kruslov said apologetically.

“Shall I tell this all as it happened?”

“Please, sir.”

“My sister Nadine married Rolph Olan. Shortly after marriage he began to make her life a hell on earth. She confided in me, we were always close. I spoke to Rolph several times during the years. He ignored me. He seemed amused by me. His infidelities were becoming notorious. It was no life for my sister. On the day of his death I phoned him at his office. I said I had to speak to him. I insisted. I had prayed for guidance. I wanted to give him one last chance. He picked me up on the corner I mentioned. I said we could talk at his house. I hoped to bring Nadine into the conversation. Nadine was resting. We talked quietly in the study. He told me that Nadine was as tasteless to him as weak tea. He said he would not spend his life chained to the living dead. He said he had decided to divorce her. That was his answer. I excused myself saying I wanted to get a drink of water. I brought the knife back from the kitchen. He had gone into the front hall, to go up the stairs and wake her and tell her his decision. I struck him with the knife. He looked down at it and raised his hand and touched the handle and tried to say something and fell. I went out through the back of the house.